Painting

[Dekenba]

Simple quick question - when painting, do you airbrush everything or use a humble brush for smaller things?

If the latter, how small do your hand brush and how big before the airbrush is brought out?

Thanks.

[Modelnut]

Personally I just airbrush large areas and use brushes to detail paint. An exception would be my WNW Phalz DIII. With so many cockpit parts, I airbrushed the desired color on the sprue and touched up with a brush during assembly.

I'm not too proud to use a rattle can eithe r;). You can decant spray paint into your airbrush jar and it works fine with little if any thinning.

A plus for using an airbrush is you get a thinner coat of paint that doesn't obscure fine detail like a brush or spray is apt to do if you aren't careful.

Hope this helps, there are some pro's here that can add to this.

Stan

[lcarroll]

I'm no Pro either but I use the same method as Stan ,  large areas/lots of parts in the same colour it's the Airbrush, a lot of other bits by brush as I go. I'm trying hard to do more with the Airbrush for all the usual reasons, nicer finish and less covering of detail to name a few.
Cheers,
Lance

[gcn]

The joy with a WNW kit is that with careful pruning most things can be painted whislst still on the sprue so even the smallest of items gets airbrushed.

I would mormally only brush paint items with a small surface area normally and items that would be a pain to mask as my brush painting skills are not too hot

[kornbeef]

Both, looking at a lot of reference pics you can see the less than perfect brushwork on aircraft, sometimes a scale size flat brush can get the best effect.

Sometimes too I'm just to lazy to load and clean the airbrush too, I often hand paint components especially if I want a variation in shades.

Keith

[Pete Nottingham]

I think I have to go along with everybody else on this, I airbrush large areas and brush paint small parts, it seems a right pain to get the airbrush and compressor out, set it all up, spray, clean the airbrush, pack it all away again, just for a part measuring
2mm x 3mm.

Cheers

Pete.

[Trackpad]

Same with me: larger areas get the airbrush, smaller ones get the paint brush. Do yourself a favour, though, and get a small collection of good paint brushes. The final finish will be much better than if you used those "ten for a dollar" packs of second rate hairy sticks! 

[Jim52]

I would recommend that you buy a couple less and go for the "Pro" grade brushes.
They'ii last longer and give much better results.

Jim